25 December 2010

Christmas is upon us, which means endless outings of Christmas classics like White Christmas (Michael Curtiz, 1954), It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1964), and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Chuck Jones/Ben Washam, 1966). As a child, my favourite TV special by far was the Rankin/Bass classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Larry Roemer/Kizo Nagashima, 1964). I loved the songs – mainly because they were sung by Burl Ives whose children’s album Burl Ives sings Little White Duck was one of the most played on my blue plastic record player.

In addition to the rich, rolling voice of Burl Ives, I found the puppet animation simply magical. The character expression and movement is so exquisitely done. It was only in recent years that I discovered that although the projects were conceived and written by Americans, the puppet animation was done by Japanese animators at Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions studio. Their partnership with Rankin/Bass had begun in 1960 with the TV series The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960-61)

In Rick Goldschmidt’s The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass, Arthur Rankin, Jr. talks of the dedication of the Japanese animators, who would stay up late into the night in order to finish an individual scene. The “Animagic” animators often ending up sleeping next to their puppets. In addition to “Tad” Mochinaga, other Japanese who worked on these films included Kizo Nagashima, Hiroshi Tabata, Ichiro Komuro, Sataoshi Fujino, Senchi Akaki, Akikazu Kono, and the producer Masaki Iizuka.

Here is a listing of the Rankin/Bass Animagic Christmas Specials along with the Japanese staff who worked on the animation side of the production: